Note from Zoe: Yesterday I had a personal conversation with Jesus who was enlightening my friend and I on taking ‘right action’, particularly in regards to health. Buddha took this further when we ‘spoke’. The capital letters are his.

Conversations with Buddha and Zoe: Right Action for Health

Buddha: Yesterday Zoe, you heard my colleague speak to you about the need for right action and proper rest. Let me recap for everyone.

‘Right action’ is when you are choosing to take a course, undertake the course, when it is right for you. Not right for another, but right for you. Of course nothing that could ever be truly right action for you could involve harming another because that is not how you are designed. Right action is when you choose to truly fulfill yourself and take steps to achieve that. It is through this right action, together with right reason and circumstance, that health and well-being are promoted. Quite simply deep fulfillment makes illness impossible.

Right action makes illness a fleeting guest in the house of the body. You are learning this Zoe. The fulfillment needs to be deep and deeply personal to the individual. Whatever it is! Picking up a needle and thread, climbing a mountain, watching an apple grow, making a deal. It is only through deep fulfillment- unique to every individual- that illness is made a hasty guest.

Rest is important too. However, rest WHEN THE BODY IS TIRED! Many of you today rest when your mind is tired. The body must still be rewarded for giving you a vehicle in which you exist. Move the body during the day till it is tired. If you return from work and you feel tired asked yourself who is tired? Your body? Your mind? Your spirit? This is important. Rest the BODY when tired. Rest the mind when the mind is tired. But do not forget the needs of the body, if actually your body is never tired by your work. This is very important if you wish illness to stay infrequently, if at all.

Now WHEN the body is tired- REST. But the mind will need to facilitate this rest, otherwise all that will be experienced is a temporary cessation of movement without deep regeneration. Practically rest when your body is tired and ENJOY it. Even if it’s the flu- enjoy giving the body what it needs. This mental and emotional willingness to physically rest promotes deep regeneration. And, if the body is tired, this is what it needs. As a course of right action, give it this.

Be mindful though of over inactivity- a problem I see as I look on. The body can’t be tired if not worked, unless ill or undergoing deep regenerative transformation and healing. The body cannot be healthful if its needs are not met- to move. Nor can you if you are not giving yourself fulfillment through right action. This is a process that needs to be relearned to accommodate the shift in lifestyle that has occurred.

Conversation with Jesus and Zoe: Enough

Jesus: On the eve of the day of reckoning few will be able to sleep. There will be an unease, a malaise, across the world. Events will have come and gone and many will be awakening to the changes we have put in place.

Economic viability now will be the bed rock for the individual. Teach yourself now how to care for yourself materially. Strip the excess now and many years of financial pain will be spared.

Learn to honour and respect what you have now and God’s grace will be yours. The yearnings, the desires for what others show, deliberately instilling desire, consumerism and envy is coming to an end.

Turn in now and let the peace come over. In truth there is nothing to have or know but yourself. In yourself you will find us. You will find love, hope, peace and charitable intent. As the turn inwards begins, do not be tempted back to the world of man’s greed where no form is enough – more shoes, clothes, bags, money, bigger, better, stripping the earth, killing the cows and deafening the sound of your inner reason.

You have enough. Free yourself from the greed, the pain of wanting and fill yourself with us. The truth of this shall set you free.

Conversation with Jesus and Zoe: Alleviate Suffering

Jesus: The suffering of many can be greatly alleviated by the few. Ensure the people you place in power represent your desires in relieving the pain of many, either by direct action, lobbying or simply standing up and speaking. The time to take a stand for what is important is now. For those of you without a voice, without faith and hope of relief, understand that your time will come. Your suffering does not go unnoticed and you are never unloved.

For those of you with voice, with means or capability, take a stand for your fellow men. Your fate is their fate. Consider that at the day of reckoning your individual lives may be measured against the fate of your peoples as a whole. I say this not to instill fear or guilt but to simply provide you with an opportunity to refocus, make choices and serve the whole rather than the self in isolation of the world around you.

Do what you can with peace, faith and hope as your bastions. My work is through you workings.

Conversation with Buddha and Zoe: Resist Nothing.

Buddha: Let me explain what this means.

For mind and mastery to be complete there needs to be a full understanding of the nature of mind; the workings of mind and the ability from that therefore to direct mind. “Resist nothing” does not refer to earthly pleasures or deliberately indulging in squalid, dirty, self gratification states. However, the fear that that is where the mind could take one, means that one resists certain thoughts, urges and in the resistance, one becomes unable to see what is real. In other words the fear of what might be real creates resistance so that reality is never quite achieved albeit heavily sought by the individual.

Your mind takes you in a myriad of directions always towards the same point though: truth, honor, trust, faith, strength. Yet this is not the experience of mind that people have. Indeed for most mind is perpetual thinking, perpetual thoughts that take you in a myriad of directions. When one approaches a type of thought that one identifies as ‘bad’, such as what we have already spoken about- thoughts of squalor, deprivation, etc,- one immediately sensors those thoughts. Yet where do these thoughts come from? Why would you sensor one and not all thought? For if we were to be fully present we would be aware of the nature of our thoughts.

I will try to keep this clear on this occasion. Mind is strength, faith, focus, union with spirit. It is a gateway to the essence, to the soul, to God, and the God experience. The road to this is paved and littered with thought. These thoughts are like leaves fallen from the trees in autumn and how we choose to respond to our journey, whilst in body, is often to become distracted by the thoughts that are on the path: to the point that we become concerned only with the nature of the leaves and the nature of do we like the leaves. And we have forgotten that the purpose of the path is to bring us to union, union with ourselves in the arms of God. Therefore resist no leaf. As you are dedicated to following your path- the path to you, the path to union with God – falsehood comes only from focusing and identifying and creating relationships with thought forms. Therefore resist nothing. Accept all and continue on your journey where we will await you.

Conversation with Buddha and Zoe: All Is Impermanent

Buddha: Begin now to look at the world the way we see it. This world is of temporary form- always shifting, always moving out, shifting each of your every lives. This world that you live in is bigger, bolder and greater than the individual life that you currently inhabit.

With this knowledge learn to respect the earth. Learn to keep the earth’s greatness in your mind and with every choice that you make be aware of consequence. I say this to each and every one of you.Yet do not become fixed on the permanence of damage or sustainability or even on life itself.

Think of yourself as in transit. You are always moving from one form into another. Birth, life stages, days, places that you visit- always moving in and out of form. Not just within the lifetime of the soul but within the lifetime even of the day. One moment is always different from the next, yet you remain. So treat your host with respect and dignity, your host the earth. You are traveling through this lifetime and leave it well.

Begin to recognize that there are those that have gone before you who knew and understood this and worked to leave no footprint of themselves upon the earth. Take a step towards this. This will do two things: Firstly this will give the respect to the earth that it deserves. Secondly this will begin to train you in the nature of your reality right now as you sit and read these words. This moment, whilst real now, will be gone in a moment from now. Take from it what you need. Recognize the impermanence of all and become still and settled within that. Great is the suffering of the many who try and fix points through time, through desire.

Whilst great things can be achieved within a lifetime, within a year, within a month, a week, a day, all is just single moments threaded together. All is impermanent.

I taught to think of moments, of actions, of words spoken to others, of thoughts, all of these as beads on string. Each bead represents that thought, that moment, that desire, that action. This will be the legacy that the soul will carry forth from you. You will with you a string of beads and on that string will be your decisions whether you have been conscious of them or not. This is what you will take to what id beyond form. I taught that this is all that is important- a string of beads- and that isn’t even real in form but metaphysical.

Today I will teach you to value the impact of your life, your choices. Delve into your thoughts, your desires to help you become aware of the impact of your life and your choices, conscious or not.

Life is different today. Different in the fact that impact is greater, desire is greater, restlessness and suffering is greater and this happens at a time when many of you have more of that which is in form. Therefore switch your focus from your daytime job to give you things, material forms, and instead focus on your inner world. This is your real job and it matters not what you do in the world of form. What matters is how. Bring conscious awareness into your life, into your moment and learn to keep the focus on your internal world. learn to become aware of when you become out of yourself and learn to hold the moments where you are inside. Inside your body, inside your life, inside what you are doing- this is where you meet the present. This is where you are doing you inner work.

Conversation with Master Buddha and TMichael: Gay Marriage

TM: I’ve been reading news accounts of the battle between those who favor gay marriage being sanctioned under law and those who oppose it. Some oppose it on religious grounds and some on biological grounds in that it doesn’t facilitate pro-creation naturally. What is your view on the religious grounds for or against gay marriage?

Master Buddha: If a man and a woman have sexual intercourse, there is a probability pregnancy will result, and a second probability that child birth will follow. This is commonly known and understood in modern society. That wasn’t always the case—many centuries ago it was a mystery how offspring were conceived by the vast majority of human population. There arose from the mystery many superstitions around conception and child birth. Conception and child birth require the engagement of male and female contributing each their part. This is a biologic fact. It doesn’t require a social bond to be successful. As a matter of modern fact, it doesn’t require that they ever physically engage in person (artificial insemination).

TM: Ok, I’m with you so far. Creating babies follows sex between a man and a woman, or by artificial means. A long time ago, and I hope a very long time ago, people didn’t quite make the connection and so developed superstitious beliefs around baby-making.

Master Buddha: So, by biologic fact a gay male marriage cannot produce offspring between the two partners, but can enlist a female outside the marriage to perform that role. The same of course then for two female partners. This means that gay couples are capable of producing offspring by proxy of a third partner if they so desire. This is the same for heterosexual couples who are unable to conceive a child. It merely accommodates the biologic fact.

TM: If it’s a biologic fact, then how does it become a religious issue or even a social concern?

Master Buddha: I’m pulling this apart for you, because it can get very tangled. At some point in human history there was a shift in social belief that the chief role of marriage between a man and woman was to create offspring. To ensure that their offspring would not just be running around in reckless abandon they also created social convention around the single-family household and the early beginnings of property rights. The child belonged to the parents and the household and was subject to their supervision and responsibility, and they together as a household subject to the larger society and community.

TM: You’re saying it was a social evolution, not a religious one. Is that correct?

Master Buddha: It is difficult to separate religion from social, because religion is a social enterprise. This is why this subject is so impossible for some people to intellectually grasp. I will continue now to explain.

Religion is a social enterprise, which means that humans have created religions and formed into social sects in order to propagate their religious beliefs and social tenets.

TM: Hold on a second, almost all religious people will say that religions were created by God, or Gods through prophets or enlightened intermediaries (present company included), and that they are followers of that particular religious teaching. God laid the foundation and they followed his word to build on it.

Master Buddha: Please refer to other conversations we’ve had on the subject of truth and how it is convoluted with faith and a state of not knowing everything. Humans will posit truth on a great many things, but that doesn’t make it true. It is merely their belief in what is true. Let’s assume for a moment that religions were founded on direct expression of truth from God or Gods. Humans, as you suggest, interpret that and build on it to make it a social belief system. The filter applied is still of human origin, and therefore subject to the ignorance of humanity.

TM: I don’t mean to stray from our topic, but this seems important to clear up, because so much of what follows is dependent upon this point. You’re saying that religions are social institutions and are birthed and propagated as social tenets, not the word of God.

Master Buddha: I don’t wish to belabor the point of origin of religious beliefs, and so for our discussion I said we could assume that religions spring from the word of God or Gods. Humans the take that word and add to it their interpretations and filter it into social conventions by which they live. That means that religions become social entities imbued with human constructs of socialized behavior. May we continue?

TM: Yes, but maybe we have to come back to this at some point.

Master Buddha: The great problem for humanity in building laws that govern society is that they cannot separate social convention from religious teachings. Gay marriage as it relates to law must pass through the filters of social convention, which is conditioned by religious beliefs. So you can easily see the conundrum. And this provokes a challenge to the truths held by those who believe that the word of God prohibits such human relations.

For them the syllogism flows like this:
God has said that the purpose of a man|woman relationship is to create babies and form single-family households and rear their offspring.
Gay couples cannot create babies directly.
Therefore, gay marriage is not sanctioned by God, and must be excluded from human options.

For religious believers, denying this logic is tantamount to denying the word of God. It will then undermine a society based upon the word of God and eventually lead to the ruin of society. How it reconciles with many other words of God in which it produces conflict and contradiction is inconvenient, but doesn’t cause their belief to waver. They must default to the only intellectual escape possible, which is that God is mysterious and knows more than humankind, and so it isn’t the place of humanity to question this contradiction. It is for humanity to follow the things that are clear as well as the things that aren’t without fail. God will sort it out later.

TM: Yes, I believe you’ve stated that correctly according to what they believe. But is that correct?

Master Buddha: The question is presented incorrectly. Let me re-frame it. What is the role of religion for humanity and what is the role of social convention in creating laws that govern human behavior?

TM: So, you won’t just come right out with an answer to settle the question will you?

Master Buddha: I’m taking an approach that will help you understand the issue and formulate an answer. As we have stated previously in these conversations, the role of religion is to represent spiritual theories for individuals to ponder in an effort to expand their imaginations and range of possibilities for living a better life. Religions form from spiritual ideas and concepts, that in the pure state apply to an individual. Religions become social institutions because they are comprised of like-minded individuals. The purpose of which is to share and discuss the spiritual idea and concepts.

Humans have taken religions in this social form and expanded them into governance entities. Therein lies the problem. It sets up massive conflicts between different religions and between members of society who subscribe to those different religious beliefs. The only way for a system of religious-dominant laws to work without constant and violent conflict is too segregate inhabitants by religion and assign each to their own geographic place. Since that isn’t practical today, you must have a different way. Democratic societies have created a separation of religion and government. Ideally, this should work in a pluralistic religious society. But, it doesn’t work as perfectly as intended, because those who are aligned with religious beliefs that have been interpreted to guide their daily lives in an integrated society, immediately come in conflict with behaviors they find inconsistent with their beliefs. The resulting dissonance cries for resolution. They seek to alter laws to remove the dissonance.

TM: I can see why you’re not so popular with Christians and Muslims. From what I observe both religious groups would love for everyone to line up with them to rule the world according to their beliefs. In that scenario they could outlaw all the behaviors inconsistent with their beliefs and presumably find the harmony in governance.

Master Buddha: Well, secretly all religious groups wish for that scenario, but some are more vocal than others.

TM: Years ago when I visited Nepal and spent some time in Kathmandu, I noticed the incredible non-hostile melding of Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and Christians. But back to our topic. How do we bring this conversation to a conclusion?

Master Buddha: Gay marriage could only be subject to religious scrutiny within a purely religious context. Religious context is confined to individuals and their peers for introspection. Social institutions that are erected for governance must take into consideration that there are many types of life styles and it is the responsibility of government to create laws that promote harmony among the differences while removing violence. The fact that gays must seek legal sanction within your laws informs us that the separation between government and religion is not yet a reality.

TM: Will it ever be?

Master Buddha: It’s possible of course, but only when people representing religions surrender to living peacefully with others with different beliefs and abstain from their agendas of hegemony in thought and behavior.

Conversation with Buddha and Zoe: Mind is Strength, Faith, Focus, Union with Spirit

Buddha: Zoë, you have been hearing my words in your head, ‘resist nothing, resist nothing’ and so on. Let me explain what this means.

For mind and mastery to be complete there needs to be a full understanding of the nature of mind, the workings of mind and the ability from that therefore to direct mind. “Resist nothing” does not refer to earthly pleasures or deliberately indulging in squalid, dirty, self gratification states. However, the fear that that is where the mind could take one, means that one resists certain thoughts, urges and in the resistance, one becomes unable to see what is real. In other words, the fear of what might be real creates resistance so that reality is never quite achieved albeit heavily sought by the individual.

Your mind takes you in a myriad of directions always towards the same point though: truth, honour, trust, faith, strength. Yet this is not the experience of mind that people have. For most, ‘mind’ equates perpetual thinking; perpetual thoughts that take you in a myriad of directions. When one approaches a type of thought that one identifies as ‘bad’, such as what we have already spoken about, one immediately censors those thoughts.

Yet where do these thoughts come from? Why would you censor one and not all thought?

If we were fully present we would be aware of the nature of our thoughts and the thinking process.

I will try to keep this clear and simple on this occasion.

Mind is strength, faith, focus, union with spirit. It is a gateway to the essence, to the soul, to God, and the God experience. The road to this union is paved and littered with thought. These thoughts are like leaves fallen from the trees in autumn. How do we choose to respond to our journey whilst in body? It is often to become distracted by the thoughts that are on the path to the point that we become concerned only with the nature of the leaves and the nature of do we like the leaves. And we have forgotten that the purpose of the path is to bring us to union: union with ourselves in the arms of God. Therefore, resist no leaf. As you are dedicated to following your path, the path to you, the path to union with God, falsehood comes only from focusing and identifying and creating relationships with thought forms. Therefore, resist nothing. Accept all and continue on your journey where we will await you.

Conversation with Buddha and Zoe: The Great Peace

Buddha: We are moving to a time where earth will be as one. A great peace will descend from on high, from on low and this peace will arise in those who are awake and those who are seeking to become awake. We are looking to help this process and this will indeed be speeded up. Speeded up by you, readers, as you choose to open yourselves to change, to love, to peace and work in your own lives to become centered. So for each of you who choose a centred life, one by one, you help choose peace, a new age. And we all thank you for this. There will come a time when there is a significant number walking the earth that will be able to pull us into their hearts. The mechanisms of this are with those who are seeking peace, seeking a different way of being. A harmonious one, a loving one, a joyful one and those that are taking the action to create a centered existence. So for all of you who wish to see the change be the change. These are words well known amongst several of you. Center your lives: not by changing what you do, but merely by focusing on how you do it. The new earth will not come about by the world becoming poets and philosophers. It will come about as each individual in their day to day lives awakens, makes choices and takes action to become the change, become the peace.

Conversation with Buddha and Zoe: Be Yourself

Buddha: Lets speak more about mind. As you know there is no one conscious reality, there is no one consciousness. Instead, there are interlinking realities. And what is that interlinking reality? Love: love inter-relates all. What do we mean by love? The ability to be joyous in just being.

The flower is just a flower. A rose doesn’t try and be a lily; it simply extends the best of itself to try and meet the sun as a beautiful expression of the creative wonder of God. And this is what we want for humanity. If you are a rose don’t try and be a lily. If you are a lily don’t try and be a chrysanthemum. Simply be, learn to be.

There is nothing to do there is no way to be, other than through the suspension of mind. Yet, interestingly, it is mind that inter-relates all. There are many paradoxes to this as there are many layers of reality. What is real for your cat Zoë, is real. What is real for the bird that the cat is watching, is real. What is real for you watching the cat watch the bird, is real. What is real for me is the connective force that unites all of us, of which I am part, and the willingness for a transcendence. The transcendence of the current state of humanity. This current state is nothing but a state mind. When enough people change their state of mind there will be a change in the state of reality. This is not hard. It is easy to do and it starts with every individual taking account of their lives, their works and choosing to wake up.

Spending your time as a rose trying to be a lily is exhausting. Ultimately you will fail. But understanding that you are some sort of flower that through becoming peaceful with the self turns out to be a rose will be a wonder. And this is what we wait on: the return of the rose.

How do you know if you’re a rose trying to be a lily? It hurts. How do you know if you’re a lily trying to be a rose? It hurts. You are reaching for something that is beyond your form, beyond essence, beyond your blueprint, yet you bend and twist and dye, and contort. And ultimately there will be no peace, there will be no stillness, there will be no wholeness- there will only be pain for a rose cannot be a lily and a lily cannot be a rose. How do you know if you are a rose? You are a rose and you have peace. How do you know if you are a lily? You are a lily and you have peace.

What is peace? A fundamental feeling that all is well and all is well with you.

All that is not well can be resolved. Some things will take large efforts, some things will take smaller efforts. But ultimately only a rose can be a rose and ultimately only the lily can be the lily. To try and be something else is to inflict pain. This is not the purpose of a rose even though it has thorns! This is not the purpose of a lily even though its pollen can be toxic! A rose is a rose and a lily is a lily. Let that be for now.